


One Time

by scarlettblythe



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3371483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlettblythe/pseuds/scarlettblythe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For city_bright's prompt: Danny/Mindy AU based on this quote/the movie Timer: "If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know?"</p><p>I twisted this a little bit, because as I was writing it turned into HOW you make this decision rather than WHETHER you make it. I'm sorry, and I hope you still like it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [city_bright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/city_bright/gifts).



“I never wanted one. I mean, _soul mates,_ you know? It’s just some shit from the movies. I don’t need some hinky clock to tell me when a woman is right for me. But my ex-wife… I don’t know. She wanted to know, I guess. She wanted to know? She and her girlfriends, they went out for brunch, and she came home with a ticking clock on her arm.”

“It was ticking.”

“Tick, tock.”

“So you got a divorce?”

Danny snorted. “Nah. We both pretended like it didn’t matter, like _what can an algorithm tell us,_ it’s just math, you know? She started wearing chunky bracelets, long sleeves.”

“But you are divorced.”

“I went away for a conference. Come home, her clock has stopped ticking, just in time for the guy she’s in bed with.” He stared moodily into his glass. “I’d forgotten about it. I guess it was stupid to think she had too.”

 

Mindy looked at him. _Danny Castellano._ She turned the name over in her mouth, marvelled at the strength of it, the plain comfort in the syllable pattern. His wrists were covered by his shirt, but she could see the telltale red glow of the digital face just past one cuff. She reached up the sleeve of her green blazer, rubbing the piece of metal on her forearm introspectively.

 

“I wasn’t going to get one. My best friends, we all took this stupid oath back in college. _Thou shalt wait for true love to find thee._ It was like, having a Timer was pretending you had control over this thing that you weren’t meant to have control over. And Alex said – she’s really, like, logical, Alex – she said that the fact that Timers exist means you’re going to meet them sometime anyway.”

“And then what? You’re getting older, time is passing, and you’re wondering if you missed him?”

“Rude. No, I knew I hadn’t missed him.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, eyes fixed on hers as he swigged his whisky.

“Don’t do that, okay? It’s not that there haven’t been guys. But the ones with Timers, well, you know they’re going to leave. And I’m not stupid enough to think I know better than the math, like some of us.” She stirred her drink with her straw, muddling the fruit at the bottom with a sigh.

 

“The ones without Timers, though. You go into it, and it’s like – it’s what it must have been before the clocks existed. It’s all… _giddy._ But then one day, you come home and there it is.”

“Ticking.”

“Tick-tock.”

“They all got Timers?”

“Hey, I heard the judgement in that _all,_ buddy. Some did, yes. Others didn’t. But still…”

“Still what? No Timer, what’s the problem? You find them the old-fashioned way.”

“Yeah, and the old fashioned way is when you wake up one morning and realise you never _wanted_ to move to Haiti, to Texas, to support them while they became a DJ or an event planner or… ten other things.”

 

“Haiti?” He looked her up and down. “Did you take that outfit to Haiti?”

“No, but I bought these shoes there, Judgey.”

“Really?”

“Okay, I didn’t, but I could have. I mean, not these ones specifically. They’re this season’s, and I was there like, over a year ago. But ones _like_ them. The point is, there’s nothing wrong with Haiti. I even liked it there. But I still only went because I loved him, and when you love someone, you go to Haiti with them.”

“When you love someone, you don’t make them go to Haiti.”

“What is your problem with Haiti?”

“Not Haiti as a place. But you said Texas, and what, ‘ten other places’? If you love someone, you don’t drag them around behind you while you _find yourself._ That’s trash.”

“Yeah, I think that was it. If you love someone, you go to Haiti. But if they love you, they’ll stay.” She shook her head. “So in the end, what does love even have to do with it?”

 _“What does love even have to do with it.”_   He marvelled at the words. “And here I had you pegged as a romantic.”

“I’ve had to rethink that, recently.” She took a long drink through her straw, taking a strange delight in his wince at the bubbled slurp from the almost-empty glass. “I used to think Timers tell you who your soul mate is, like, your _true love,_ you know? Your clock zeroes out, then that day you walk into a room, and the alarm goes off, bells start chiming, you see each other, and that's it! You've found them. Then you get married, you have a million babies – I mean, unless you don’t want a million babies, I guess – and you grow old in a house with like, gables and eaves and an old oak tree in the back yard.”

“Historic New England.”

“I guess.”

“Dog?” He cocked an eyebrow at her as if this was a real question, and she found herself squaring off against him.

“Dachshund.”

“Labrador,” he corrected, smirking.

“Exactly. That’s exactly my point. Timers don’t tell you who you’ll love the most. They tell you who won’t make you go to ten places you don’t want to go. Timers aren’t about white horses and a thousand yellow daisies –”

“Bridget Jones?”

“Lorelai Gilmore. Timers aren’t about the grand gestures. They’re about all the stuff after that. Timers tell you who you won’t have to shave off too many pieces of yourself for. They tell you who fits. Who’s _right._ I think.”

 

“So you don’t think you’ll love a man a Timer picks out for you.”

She looked up at him. Studied his face, the frown lines compressed into his forehead from four decades of scowling.

“I just don’t think the fact that a Timer wouldn’t have picked Casey means I loved him any less.”

Danny nodded. “I loved Christina, too.”

“But she wasn’t right.”

He shrugged, his eyes drifting off to focus on something behind her. “I wasn’t right.”

“Danny, _she_ cheated on _you_. She’s the one who wasn’t right.”

 

His eyes wandered back to her, focusing on her hands, watching her use her straw to attack the ice in her drink.

“See that’s the thing. I always catch myself thinking, _what if she hadn’t?_ What if she hadn’t done it? Had met him, had said _fuck it_ like we always swore we would, had come home and watched TV that night?”

Mindy frowned. “She would have done something else. People like that, that’s not the _one_ shitty thing they’re going to do to you. If she’s the kind of woman who can cheat on her husband, she’s going to fuck you over somehow, trust me.”

 

Danny shook his head. “It’s more than that. The thing I realised, is that cheating on me? That’s who she is. Literally. All we are is what we do, you know? God, I sound like a fucking dick right now, I know. I should write a fucking book. But what I mean is just…”

“If she hadn’t cheated on you, she would have been a different person. Just like if she’d never married you, she would have been a different person. The action changed her.”

“I guess. And the person who made that decision had to be that _kind_ of person, as well. Fuck. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “This whole Timer thing. I don’t think I’m meant to think shit through like this.”

“Yeah, the Timer makes us all into like, Freud or whatever.”

“Maybe not Freud. Oedipal complex. Not good.”

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Like every woman didn’t know that was complete crap. Like, you are _nothing_ like my Dad. That’s a compliment. Or… I mean I love my Dad, okay? But not…” she flapped her hands, as though to physically clear the space where her words had landed. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He downed the rest of his drink, rakish grin taking over his face. “You want me.”

“Shut up.”

“Want me to get a room in this place?”

“Okay seriously, shut up.”

 

He put the empty glass down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The grin went with it, replaced with a sweet smile, one that lit up his deep brown eyes.

“Want another drink?”

She pressed her lips together. “Why not? Seems like the situation calls for it, right?”

He raised an arm, beckoned the bartender. She leaned her head back against the booth, feeling the give of the foam under the fabric. She watched him order, _same again,_ and considered his words.

“You know, Casey hasn’t moved in like, a year.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I ran into him last time I was in LA. He runs this really cool shoe company. You would hate it.”

“And he hasn’t skipped out?”

She shook her head. “He’s actually really good at it. I guess he was always good at everything, though. But it feels, I don’t know, right, for him. He gets to travel and always be doing all this new, cool stuff, but it’s still stable, you know?”

“You thinking about trying again?”

“No. It’s like we said before. If you love someone, you move to Haiti with them.”

“If you love someone, you don’t ask them to move to Haiti.”

She nodded, very slowly. “I don’t know whether he’d stay for me, now. But I know I wouldn’t move for him.”

 

His eyes were focused on her, his head nodding almost imperceptibly as he took her in: shoulders squared almost defiantly, smile uncertain, yet determined. A woman he couldn’t imagine moving for anyone but herself. The silence stretched, the two of them watching each other peaceably, until the drinks arrived and Mindy went for them, sucking hers down with a verve that made him smile. He found himself leaning forward, chin leaning against tented hands, elbows braced against his thighs, and suddenly felt with a certainty that perplexed him that it was _his turn._

 

“Christina never got alimony.” The words made a mad dash to escape his mouth.

“Well sure, she cheated.” Mindy shrugged, not giving his declaration the awe he felt it deserved. He rearranged himself, shifting towards her, leaning across the table to drive his point home.

“No, that’s not it. I would have given her alimony no matter what. I made a vow to take care of her.”

“Yeah, and she made a vow to love you forever and not cheat on you with some rando.” Mindy was spearing berries with her straw and popping them into her mouth, one eyebrow cocked at him like he was slightly stupid.

“Not the point. Marriage isn’t about any of that. It’s about family.” He felt his accent broaden on the last three words, an instinctive return to a home that he’d always wanted to be more than it was.

“Family means nobody gets left behind.” Mindy nodded decisively, certain she’d cracked his code.

He frowned. “Is that one of those Godfather ripoffs?”

“Lilo and Stitch.”

He looked at her blankly.

“So yes.”

“Just watch the original. No-one called Stitch can match the Godfather.”

“Oh, Stitch can match the Godfather. Stitch would _destroy_ the Godfather. Probably by accident, though.”

 

Danny shook his head, uncertain how the conversation had ended up where it had, but determined to make sure this woman, of all women, see his point. He rolled up his sleeve to expose the dull silver rectangle adorning his wrist, bright red zeroes reminding him how crucial this whole thing really was.

“Point is, I made a vow. And I guess, when I got this thing?” He sighed, half frustrated. “I don’t know.”

“You were hoping it would find you someone who would mean it as much as you did.” Her voice was softer than he’d ever heard it - ever, in these two-something hours. Ever, in the rest of his life. He searched her face.

“Did it?”

 

She matched his stare. “You keep talking about family. About vows. About… alimony. And I know, I know I said I got this thing because I tried the whirlwind romance way and I got burned. I know the whole point was to find the person who will _fit_ with me and not to wake up a year from now and realise I’ve lost who I am.”

“You’re about to say but, aren’t you?”

“But I want both. Danny, I need both. This – meeting you today, and hearing that stupid ringtone, and now we’re sitting here talking about fucking _New England_ , and I _hate_ those places –”

“Me too! You want history? The Island has history, okay? New York has history. This is the most important city in the world!” His voice was heated, raised, and it hit him, all of a sudden, how she always seemed to end up on some stupid tangent. How when you might only have a few hours with a person you were meant to have forever with, suddenly everything had to be said right now, this minute, and -

“Danny!” She was either scolding him for his rant or calling his attention.

“Sorry.” Either way he dreaded coming back to her. She sighed, deeply. His stomach caught at the noise, twisted around it.

 

“I need the grand gestures, Danny. I’m sorry. I just can’t start the rest of my life this way.”

“Yeah, no. I get it. I get it. It’s not really… you want the music and the flowers. Bridget Jones’ daisies.”

“Kathleen Kelly was the one with the daisies.”

“I thought you said her name was Lorelai?”

“Ha! I knew you were faking your lack of rom-com knowledge! I’ve totally got your interest piqued!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He put his glass down with a dull thud. When he looked up at her, her expression had faded into an awful sadness, and the words spilled out of him miserably. “So is that it?”

“I think that’s it.” Her voice was small, but frighteningly real.

“Okay then. Guess we should head back.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

 

So they walked back, in a silence which was uncomfortably companionable. Weighty with shared meaning and the unfortunate certainty that despite everything, the zeroes on their wrists might make this unavoidable. They walked back, and Dr. Shulman welcomed them back like his children, clucky, excited to see what they’d decided. _How often do Timers zero out in a job interview?_ he crowed, and Mindy flinched a little, smiling tightly. Danny recoiled like that tiny movement was a punch to the face. Shulman looked between them and nodded, understanding. Mindy shook Dr. Shulman’s hand, _nice to meet you, thank you for the opportunity,_ and Shulman smiled at her like a father and said _we’ll be in touch._ She left. Danny felt like something in him had followed her. When Shulman asked him, quietly, if Danny thought he could work with a soul mate who didn’t want him, Danny’s quiet _yes_ was only just enough to convince him.

 

Mindy would start on Monday. Shulman would call her. They would be co-workers, and they would move on. The Timers just hadn’t gotten it right this time, was all. Or they’d gotten it right at the wrong time. It was disappointing, but not unprecedented. All systems had anomalies.

 

Danny stood in his office, helplessly trying to understand what the zeroes still stubbornly attached to his wrist were trying to tell him.

 

************************

“Mindy. Mindy, wake up. There’s some guy on the intercom for you.” Mindy’s roommate shook her awake, voice an almost hysterical whisper.

“What?” Mindy was groggy. She squinted at the clock on her bedside table. It was barely five in the morning. This was not good.

“I don’t know, but he wants to be buzzed up. But he said his name is Danny and I don’t recognise his voice?”

“Danny?” Suddenly she was awake.

“Yeah. Do you know him? Should I call the cops?”

“Danny.” She needed to hear it again, to be sure this wasn’t some weird fever dream caused by the half-pound block of cheese she’d eaten straight from the bag before she went to bed.

“Mindy, I need you to be awake right now. This could be an actual murderer. It’s the moment you’ve been preparing for your whole life.”

“I’m awake. I’m just - why is Danny here?”

 _“I don’t know._ Do I call the cops?”

“No. I don’t think so. He’s my - he’s my co-worker.”

“Why is your co-worker outside our house at five in the morning?” She groaned. “Mindy, you haven’t started stealing office supplies already, have you? You haven’t even had your first day yet!”

Mindy dragged herself out of bed and down the hall, pointedly ignoring her roommate’s rant about professionalism. She got to the intercom and pressed the button, resting her forehead against the wall and closing her eyes.

“Danny? It is five in the morning.”

“I need to talk to you.” His voice was gravelly, like he hadn’t slept. Mindy understood the feeling.

“At five in the morning?”

“I normally go for my run around now.”

“And your jog just happened to take you to my house? How did you know where I lived, by the way?” Oh god, I wasn’t sleep-shouting again, was I? The next building over said they’d call the cops if they heard me again, Danny!”

“No! No, don’t panic. I just - I asked Shulman for it.”

“Our boss gave out my address?”

“Well, I mean, considering the circumstances…”

“What, just because you’re my soul mate you can’t be a serial murderer?”

“You think your soul mate is _likely_ to be a serial murderer?”

“Well… it’d actually make a lot of sense.”

“I’m going to breeze right past that. Look, I need to show you something. Get dressed, come downstairs.”

“Five in the morning, Danny.”

“It’s important, okay?”

“Ugh. Fine. _Fine._ You’re lucky you’re my One.”

“Yeah.” The static from the intercom was filled with something, like the breath he took after that one small word had been the most important he’d ever taken.

 

She got downstairs, and Danny was sitting on her stoop in a suit.

“I thought you said you were running?”

“No, I said I normally run.”

“Danny, what are you doing?”

“I told you. I have to show you something.” He nodded to a silver car parked outside her building. “Get in.”

“You have a car? In New York?”

He shrugged. “Normally it lives at my mom’s house. But today, it seemed like a good idea.” He opened the passenger door for her. She hesitated, resting her hands on the door frame.

“You better not kill me. I’ll haunt you, Castellano.”

“I know you will.”

 

They pulled up on a residential street in an area of New York Mindy didn’t even recognise. Danny handed her a scarf.

“What is this for? This isn’t a sex thing, is it?”

He motioned to her face. “Blindfold.”

“It’s totally a sex thing. You are such a perv! I should have known. It’s always the quiet ones.”

“Mindy, please. Just, will you trust me?” His eyes were so full, his lips almost pouting with sincerity, and she couldn’t stand against it.

“Dammit. Fine.” She tied it around her face.

He guided her out of the car, one arm slipping around her waist and the other hand winding through the fingers of the hand closest to him. He squeezed it reassuringly as he walked them down the street, his arm reassuring and firm around her back.

“Okay. Don’t panic, but there are stairs and I wouldn’t trust you to walk up them even without a blindfold, so -” he let her go, only to swing one hand under her knees and the other around her shoulders, lifting her to his chest.

“Woah. You’re like three feet tall, you shouldn’t be able to lift me! How much time are you spending in the gym?”

“Enough.”

“I’ll bet your whole life has been preparing for this moment, you perv.”

“I think that’s kind of the point, yeah.”

“Oh. Right.”

He walked them up a short flight of stairs and set her down, with limited grace, on something that felt like concrete. She heard a key in a lock and the creak of a door opening. His arm was back around her waist, helping her through the doorway, and then he was gone. She heard a click and the warm glow of electric lights filtered under the scarf. She heard something rustling. There was a thump, he swore and she was about to take off her blindfold to check on him when his fingers were on her face, slipping the fabric off her eyes.

 

He was smiling. Excited, proud, hopeful. He stepped back and she saw hundreds, thousands of sparkling fairy lights, in all different colours, wound around the bare bones of a construction site. They gave the space an otherworldly glow, and as her eyes adjusted, she realised that this was a house. Or it would be, when it had walls. She looked at him in wonder. He shrugged.

“You said you wanted a grand gesture. Is this - is it grand?”

“Danny, what is this?”

  


“When I got the Timer, and it said two weeks - _two weeks._ I just. I felt like I had to prepare, you know? I couldn’t just have her, have you, shove into my apartment. I mean, look at you.” He gestured to her carefully-selected outfit. “There’s no way I have the closet space.”

“Danny, did you buy a house?” She looked around again, and reconsidered. “Part of a house?”

 

“A brownstone. I was driving through the neighbourhood, and I saw the For Sale sign. I don’t know. It’s stupid, I know. I shouldn’t have done it. Should have waited. We can sell - I can sell. But this? It was a mess. I got Ray - he’s my contractor, Ray - and he just demoed the whole thing. And now?” He walked up to her, took her hands in his, beseeching her to listen to him. “We can make this anything we want. It’s three floors. We can have, I don’t know, six bedrooms, for, for kids. Or not! If you don’t want kids. We can have just an apartment for my mom on the top floor and the whole second floor can be your closet. You can paint it, if you want. I mean, no colours that will give me a migraine. But within reason. Paint it.”

He stopped for a second, breathing hard.

“It’s nothing now. We’re nothing now. But it could be - this could be anything.”

She nodded, slowly, understanding. “We could be anything.”

“If you want.”

 

She let go of his hands, walking through a forest of wooden planks, the skeleton of _anything_. She surveyed what would be rooms, saw a kitchen, bright, white with splashes of blue, a cosy yellow living room, saw the staircase covered in red. She turned back to Danny. He was still breathing hard, his suit now covered in a very light coat of dust.

“Okay.”

“Okay to the house?”

“No. This house is a mess. I’ve heard five sirens since I’ve been here and I’m pretty sure I just saw a rat the size of a dog. But okay, to you. Okay to us.”

 

They both let out long breaths. Mindy let herself be pulled in by the inevitability, by the reality that if they let it, this could be it.

 

"Come on, Soul Mate. You’re buying me breakfast. And a _lot_ of coffee. It is still way too early to be awake.”

“Buy you breakfast? I have perfectly good cereal at home.”

“Yeah, whatever gross wholegrain fibre crap you eat to keep you regular is not going to cut it, old man. I need bear claws to erase the trauma of the dog-rats. Remember,” she tapped him on the shoulder, “You’re the one who is doing all the changing here. You already love me just the way I am.”

“Kathleen Kelly!”

“Sure. Kathleen Kelly. You got one.” Her heart soared when she saw his grin, puppy eyes lit up with excitement at finally getting one right. She could let him have this one. _Just_ this one.

 

After all, he was her One. This time.

 

 


End file.
